Starsand Island shares a lot of similarities with other life simulators. However, each game tends to have its own unique features to set it apart. In the process of setting itself apart, Starsand Island includes elements that you might overlook at first, only to learn later how useful they can actually be when you’re completing tasks or quests.
In general, Starsand Island does a decent job teaching you about life on the island and how to use the various mechanics of the game. Then, as you play, you learn the nuances of these mechanics, which can lead to wishing you’d known those smaller details earlier to make life easier.
10
Talk to NPCs
Take the Time to Stop and Talk to NPCs Daily
This seems like advice for when you’re focused on gaining affection with NPCs, and that’s definitely not a bad thing to build up in Starsand Island. It turns out that talking to NPCs, even Tourists, has another benefit beyond affection, and that would be gifts.
When you start a conversation with an NPC, they open up by giving you a random gift. While a lot of the items you end up receiving can be useless or common enough that you don’t exactly need more of them, you can also receive items that are difficult to get. Plus, getting free food is always nice for recovering Stamina.
9
Build a Request Bulletin
Accept Requests from Your Home
This is definitely a quality-of-life improvement. Usually, you have to go to the Community Center in town to see the board outside the building and what requests the islanders made for that day, and then go retrieve items if you don’t already have them. It’s not the worst situation, but it can feel tedious.
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However, if you go through the crafter quests with Zerine, you’re able to purchase a Request Bulletin Blueprint from her general store. When you craft this, you can place it on your property, and it functions just like the standard board in town.
8
Build a Shipping Box
You’ll Always Have Too Many Items
Unlike Stardew Valley, Starsand Island doesn’t give you a Shipping Box on your property right when you start the game. This means that when you inevitably run out of space in your bag, you need to either stuff items into storage boxes or you need to go into town and sell what you don’t need at one of the shop terminals.
It turns out that you can actually build your own Shipping Box, and the blueprint is available at the same time as the Request Board Blueprint at Zerine’s General Store through the crafter quests. Then, you can better manage both your storage space and your income by selling excess items.
7
Stockpile Resources
You’ll Always Need Materials
Unsurprisingly, you need a lot of materials in Starsand Island, and that’s basically true at all points in the game. As you unlock more workstations and blueprints, you need more complex materials to build those items, and those materials tend to build on the foundations of the most basic materials in the game.
Because of this, it’s a good idea to take the time to regularly mine ores and gems, as well as chop down trees and shrubs, as you’ll always need minerals and wood. On top of that, you’ll want to keep a small garden as well for when you start ranching, and then keep the animal by-products that you might not think you need, because each animal type gives you a by-product used to craft feed for other animals.
6
Upgrade to the Machete and Hammer
These Tools Let You Harvest High-Level Materials
The standard Axe and Pickaxe are sufficient for a bit at the beginning of the game, especially when you have the Impact and Impulse versions of them. However, they aren’t going to get you through the mid-game content. For that, you need stronger tools.
The Axe upgrades into the Machete, while the Pickaxe upgrades into the Impact Hammer. These tools are essential, as you can’t gather resources like Gold or Premium Wood without them, and those are resources that you’ll have to have for crafting as you go through the questlines for each available activity.
5
Upgrade Your Bag
Space is Valuable
You actually unlock upgrades for your bag quite early, but it’s easy to miss the icon for it in the bottom left corner of the bag. Once you unlock bag upgrades, you unlock all of them. So, you can keep going through all eight upgrades as long as you have the required materials.
The downside is that the materials grow increasingly difficult to get as you go through upgrades, so you’ll end up hitting a point where you haven’t gotten far enough in questlines to gather what you need, particularly with the upgrade that requires Premium Wood Planks, which needs the Worktable III to craft. Still, even a few upgrades give you valuable extra space.
4
Focus on Crafter and Explorer
They Unlock the Most Material
There’s a reason Solara recommends that you start with crafting at the beginning of the game, as it acts as the core for most of the other features. It’s also going to give you the ability to make the items you’ll need for other activities, such as a Trellis for farming and homes for your animals when you’re ranching.
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However, you also want to speak to Zephyria early and start the explorer quests. These give you access to Moonlit Forest, and you’re going to need to enter that location to gather the bulk of the materials you’ll need throughout the game.
3
Use Charity Boxes
You Might Get Something Useful
Each mentor has a Charity Box on their property, and it’s almost always located outside the building that has the terminal they use for shopping. It looks like a Shipping Box, which can lead to you dismissing it and just going past without inspecting it closer.
If you do interact with the Charity Box, it pops out an item related to that activity. As an example, you might get Feathers from the ranching box, because they’re an animal by-product you’d receive when caring for animals. These aren’t always items you need, but they can prove useful if you’re lucky enough to get a good item.
2
Build a Realm Box
It’s Like Magical Storage
The Realm Box is unlocked through the crafting quests, and it takes some mid-level crafts to actually make one. You also need to purchase the blueprint first from Zerine’s General Store, and it’s not the cheapest one. However, it’s more than worth the time and effort to craft.
When you have a Realm Box, you’re basically able to access your storage more easily across boxes. It saves you from having to look through every box you have to figure out where you placed the items you’re looking for. You just need to carry it with you.
1
Keep Storage Boxes Together
Place Them in One Spot
You’re going to go through a lot of storage, and that means you’ll need to have multiple Storage Boxes available to hold the overflow. The downside is that it gets annoying when you have to go between boxes to sort items or to try finding what you’re looking for. Keeping your boxes in one spot helps with that issue.
When your Storage Boxes are next to each other, you can cycle through them when in the screen to view any one of them. All you have to do is use the prompts on the sides of the box’s storage to flip through the nearby boxes. This lets you get a better view of your items and means you don’t have to close and open the inventory repeatedly.
Starsand Island lets you take your time when you play, but that doesn’t mean you have to deal with tedious tasks in an inefficient way. As you learn more about the mechanics, it gets easier to organize your operations in a way that, even when you’re relaxing with the help of island life, makes it simple to complete tasks in Starsand Island.
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- Released
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February 11, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Seed Lab
- Publisher(s)
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Seed Lab
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
